Mom grounds teenage son after eavesdropping on his conversation about women. AITA?
When this mom eavesdrops on son and then grounds him, she asks Reddit:
"AITAH for grounding my son for talking about women?"
I overheard my 17 year old son talking with a friend on the phone. He was saying how he loves sleeping with “ugly chicks” because they are “easy” and “desperate”.
After he finished his conversation, I busted his door wide open and lectured him for the 10 minutes straight.
He is also grounded for a week. I can’t believe how disrespectful he is towards women. Women are not sexual objects and he was treating those girls like sexual objects.
Also, I wasn’t intentionally spying on him. The convo was loud and the walls are thin. AITA?
Let's see what readers thought.
maripostsa writes:
NTA. A lecture and grounding won't be enough though. It's easy to chalk it up as you overreacting considering he's held these beliefs for a while. You'll have to keep up with educating him because online is full of toxic men spouting their toxic and nonsensical views on women as I've already seen in this thread. You'll have to battle that every day.
vakuableremove9058 writes:
This! But seriously it's the algorithms. YouTube among others. They brainwash you. I like scify, gaming, and I'm a centrist. My algorithm thinks I'm a man..Russian brides, Viagra, love God, hate gays, F the libs, and the toxicity towards women is astounding.
I'm a woman. I don't hate anyone and I'm atheist. Your kid needs therapy and you need to start watching what your kids doing online. YouTube premium account allows multiple channels.
He can have a channel on your premium account and you can look at his history and see what's being suggested to him. I bet if you looked today at his news feed/YouTube feed, etc you'd find a lot of concerning material that's brainwashing your kid.
cobbaesar writes:
Asshole? No, but if you think your actions will accomplish anything productive then you're most definitely wrong. The actual proper way to deal with this, assuming your goal was to fundamentally change his behaviour, is to sit him down, likely multiple times, and discuss his behaviour.
Punishment and anger, like you've used now, is almost always ineffective as can be when it comes to behavioural changes. The most likely long term response, especially by a 17 year old, will be anger, resentment, and ignoring everything you've said. It's a near 100% chance your son thought you were being overdramatic.
I doubt he learned anything from being grounded, apart from having to watvh his mouth with you present. So no, you're NTA but you also handled the situation horribly.